It was not yet 8 a.m. on a Monday morning, and few of the groggy commuters waiting at the bus stop across from Malvern Town Centre betrayed any interest in the little pieces of paper foisted upon them by the two chipper Chow volunteers pacing the sidewalk. Sollanantham seemed transfixed.

“I take three buses and three subways to get to work,” he said, with a weary smile, when an observer interrupted his reverie. “An hour and a half. I get off at Sheppard, and I take the Sheppard bus, and then the McCowan bus. That means three buses. But today I cut it to two.”

Opinion polls are definitive: no municipal issue is nearly as important to Toronto voters as transit. Chow and John Tory, the best-organized and best-funded mayoral candidates, have sparred through the media about everything from taxes to character — and, away from the spotlight, sent their volunteer armies across the city to talk about one thing.

Chow volunteers have canvassed bus stops more than 100 times. Already strong with downtown progressives, she has tried to broaden her support by targeting voters like Sollanantham: bus-using, lower-income, visible-minority suburbanites who could benefit directly from her proposal to put more buses on the streets at rush hour.

Tory has made his own transit plan, a 22-stop “SmartTrack” surface rail line, even more central to his ground-level persuasion effort. On weekend door-knocking blitzes in Etobicoke, Scarborough, North York and York, and at more than 85 community events and festivals, Tory volunteers have handed out pamphlets that tout SmartTrack and SmartTrack only.

“Obviously if voters have other issues we are happy to discuss,” said Tory spokeswoman Amanda Galbraith, “but we are focused on SmartTrack.”

Tory, strongest with higher-income voters, has ceded bus terrain to Chow in favour of homes and subway stations. Last Thursday at 5 p.m., volunteers in white campaign t-shirts stood on the sidewalk outside St. Andrew station downtown. Tory, in a blazer, positioned himself nearby, like a closer hovering near the sales floor.

“John Tory’s transit plan!” said volunteer Daniel Teo, an engineer, in the manner of an unusually jovial scalper. “Could I interest you in John Tory’s public transit plan?”

The full-colour pamphlets in Teo’s hand touted “citywide transit relief.” The front page asked: “Do you want 22 more stations in 7 years?” The back page said the line “will be built fast and won’t raise property taxes.” The middle section was a map of Tory’s proposed route.

“There’ll be trains all day, so that’s gotta be good news for you,” Tory told one man. “Seven years,” he reminded another. He peppered his pitch with the phrase “gong show” — using it both to describe the traffic situation in Liberty Village and the overcrowded Yonge-Bloor subway junction.

Chow’s black-and-white bus leaflets, like her campaign speeches, make an attempt at feel-your-pain empathizing. The document promises “more comfort and dignity” to bus commuters after she adds 10 per cent more capacity during peak periods — “so you can get to work or school on time, and home earlier.”

Chow’s strategists have deployed small teams, three to six people, to cover off each corner of designated intersections. In a pre-canvass huddle on the grounds of a church at Sewells Rd. and Neilson Rd., team leader Nirmalan Vijeyakumar, 21, advised his two colleagues in purple shirts to approach harried commuters with the shorter of their two scripts.

“Have you heard about Olivia Chow?” Tony Kao, a 26-year-old information technology consultant, was soon asking passers-by. “She’s going to increase bus service by 10 per cent during rush hour.”

Tory’s SmartTrack-above-all strategy is continuing indefinitely. Chow’s bus canvasses, and her less-frequent Scarborough RT and subway canvasses, are now giving way to traditional door-knocking — but they might well resume during the fall home stretch, said campaign spokesman Jamey Heath.

Chow’s strategists see two benefits to the bus-blitzing. The bus pledge is one of Chow’s most critical platform planks, and there is no better place to reach voters who care. The bus stop is also a convenient fishing ground for the lower-income voters to whom she is aiming her non-transit policies on youth unemployment, housing, and after-school children’s recreation.

“After-school recreation programs are particularly helpful for the exact same people who take the bus,” Heath said.

Tory, too, uses transit as a bridge to his other selling points. On Thursday, a man named John Wignall challenged one of the volunteers, Tory’s niece Heather, on whether the federal government has agreed to fund SmartTrack.

“No, they haven’t,” Tory interjected.

Wignall asked how he would get Ottawa on board. “Well, I’m going to be the champion of it,” Tory said, assured. Then he pivoted: “One of the questions I’ve posed in the election: all right, if you have someone that has to get along with the federal government, the provincial government, and the council, who would you pick?”

Both candidates’ promotional materials may not be entirely accurate. Tory’s done-in-seven-years claim is a mere estimate, unconfirmed by experts or the province. The critical “now” part of Chow’s promise of “better bus service now” is highly questionable: TTC officials say they don’t have enough buses or bus storage to get more on the streets immediately.

The people at King and University showed Tory little skepticism. The half-awake people at Sewells and Neilson showed Chow’s three non-famous volunteers little at all.

But more than 40 took a leaflet. And then each of them got on a bus, with a long, slow journey ahead.

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